


Mantra

by ScarletMoth



Series: The Adventures of Lark, Avariel Ranger [2]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Planescape (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Moth's d&d stories, planescape - Freeform, sigil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 11:33:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13856940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarletMoth/pseuds/ScarletMoth
Summary: An expedition to the Hive, a pain in her arm, and an unexpected flood of unwelcome memories.





	Mantra

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: contains allusions to abuse and physical mistreatment.

Nock.  
Draw.  
Loose.

Nock.   
Draw.  
Loose. 

The chant in her head was rhythmic, a mantra, a timing of breath. 

Nock. Draw. Loose.

Her arrows found their mark. Thud. Thud. Thud. Followed by the soft crunching of the body hitting the pavement. 

Damn necromancers.   
There’d been a spate of risen corpses, bloated and shambling around the Hive. The Hive...a place many would ignore, but not Lark. She’d lived here, once, upon her arrival in the cage many cycles ago. A place abandoned by the Dabus, fallen to rot and disrepair with the poorest of the poor left to fight for scraps amongst the wreckage.

Lark did not miss The Hive.

A low moaning caught her ear, and she turned in midair to face down the next shambling corpse at the end of the street. Poor thing. A good idea to put it out of its miserable half-life. She raised the heavy oaken longbow once more.

Nock.  
Draw.  
Loose.

The arrow soared silently through the air, finding purchase between the glassy eyes of the risen before it crumpled to the street. 

A stinging pain in her arm. She looked down.   
Ah. She’d forgotten her bracers. The raw red skin of her forearm was likely to bruise from where the bowstring had slapped repeatedly. Now that was something she hadn’t felt in a very long time. She remembered when her mother first trained her in archery - she musn’t have been much older than 10 years. Whenever she missed the target too often, Mother would confiscate her armguard. Lark had cried the first few times this happened, her arms exhausted from the heavy longbow, and forearm an angry and inflamed red. Oh, she’d cried and cried, but Mother was unrelenting.  
“You only have so much time to take your shots. This will teach you to shoot straight. The quicker you down your target, the less pain you’ll feel.”

There was never any point arguing with her. It only made matters worse, and Mother more persistent in her efforts. 

The avariel winced, at the pain of her forearm and of the unwelcome memory. There was good reason she never tried thinking of her mother. Her hands reached instinctively to her back, below her wings. The scars had long since healed, from time and a little magic, but in her mind Lark still felt each crack of the cane.  
One for every missed shot. 

Lark was not a fighter. Lark was an artist. She enjoyed music, dance, painting, and experiencing the joy in revelry. She much preferred the company of her papa, learning the chords on the panflute to accompany his delicate harp. War, however, was her mother’s domain. A star archer and an officer of the Avariel armies, she had expected her only daughter to follow in her footsteps.

Lark did not enjoy fighting. Not fighting for the sake of fighting, nor fighting in regimented step. To her, fighting was a last resort, what things came to when no other way was possible. Taking a life, even that of an abomination, was never easy. Where her mother saw art in precision and aim and piling bodies, Lark saw bloodshed and fear and death. 

She’d once brought this up to her mother.

She didn’t dare try it a second time.

Each time Lark’s arms grew tired, each time she thought she could fight on no longer, she knew she could not falter, lest she feel those ghost pains of the cane across her back. 

Each time she grew weary, Lark cleared her mind, and aimed to strike swift and true, repeating the calming mantra in her mind. 

In the street of the Hive, Lark drew another arrow from her quiver at the sound of shambling footsteps, and took a deep breath, forcing the pain of her arm and the past out of her mind.  
All that was left was the arrow and the action. 

Nock.   
Draw.   
Loose.


End file.
